


(Symphonies Play) In A World Without Sound

by PanBoleyn



Series: Winds of Change and Chance [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: Miranda and her daemon, from childhood to Nassau.





	(Symphonies Play) In A World Without Sound

 

When Arete and Miranda are young, when he can change shape, he mostly keeps to the normal shapes. Their cousins go in for wild animals, big cats and wolves and all manner of fierce creatures that he and Miranda know they won't settle as.

 

 

Their cousins are the pampered children of an earl. They are just the child of the earl's sister and the mesalliance she made, the scholarly husband who was beneath her, but who Uncle Henry is fond enough of – and loyal enough to his sister's memory – that he allows his brother-in-law and young niece to live with his family in the rambling country manor. Because of this, Miranda is a quiet girl, forever curled up with a book the way her father devotes himself to his. And Arete, fittingly, chooses quiet shapes. Cats, dogs, small birds.

 

 

Or, rather, his choices would be fitting, if he didn't insist on fur and feathers in the most unusual, even _impossible_ colors. His favorite shapes in their childhood are a green-furred house cat and a purple sparrow, curled in his human's lap or sitting on her shoulder.

 

 

Catherine and Gelos are the ones who ask, finally. They are the same age – Miranda and Arete only a few months older – and take their lessons together. One day, while the girls are bent over their books, Gelos looks up at Arete. They are both cats at the moment; his fur is a warm brown while Arete has gone for blue this week. “Why are you trying to show off?”

 

 

“I'm not showing off,” Arete says as the girls look up. Catherine sniffs, as skeptical as a ten-year-old can be. Miranda glares at her and reaches for Arete, cuddling him close. Arete turns in his human's hold to watch Gelos and Catherine – both cats have the same amber eyes, at the moment. “I'm not. If I wanted to show off, I'd be a tiger every day like Henry Junior's Triteia. This is just me, it's just us.”

 

 

“But, Miranda, you're so quiet!” Catherine objects. “How can Arete be so... troublesome, when you're a little mouse!”

 

 

Arete hisses and Miranda's chin comes up. They are not mice, Arete thinks furiously. They are not. It is only that they know they don't belong, and they won't try to push themselves in. “Arete makes my noise for me,” Miranda says, staring her cousin down. “We are the way we need to be, and there's nothing wrong with it.”

 

 

“I didn't say there was! Just that it seemed odd.” Gelos is bristling, his fur standing on end, and Catherine looks uncomfortable, edging further from Miranda at the table they share. Arete wonders if they will regret this little spat later, he and his human. He wonders if it really matters. It would have happened one day eventually, after all.

 

 

After all, Arete is certain that when he settles, there will be something 'strange' about his form. Maybe it will still be the color, maybe not, but he knows it will be something.

 

 

They are twelve when Aunt Elizabeth walks into the library to tell them that their father is dead. That particular day, Miranda had been paging through books filled with sketches of animals from around the world. Arete is midway through shifting into a hawk seen only in the New World when the door opens.

 

 

“The fever has taken your father, Miranda,” Aunt Elizabeth says, her voice clipped. Her daemon hasn't even bothered to come in with her, and in fact she is barely inside the room when she makes this announcement. Then she leaves again. She's never liked them, always thought her husband far too sentimental.

 

 

Miranda flings the book at the closed door, and the thump it makes is loud, but it doesn't help. Arete doesn't even notice the form he takes as he leaps across the gap between them, curling against Miranda's chest as she hides her face in his fur. He isn't sure how long they stay like that, until he feels no tears wetting his fur, but finally Miranda sits up again, teeth clenched as she tries to look composed.

 

 

“Arete?” she whispers, looking him over.

 

 

Arete turns to look at himself, reflected in an antique floor-length mirror. It's in the room because Uncle Henry likes to use the library as a place to store old things in general as well as books, and in its surface, darkened and spotted with age, he can see his form. It's the African wildcat he'd been earlier today, the most comfortable of the shapes he'd tried. A large cat, a good bit bigger than the standard house cat, though nowhere near the size of the famous large cats, unusually long legs and big ears. Earlier, his fur had been the spotted pattern of the picture in the book, but now -

 

 

Now his fur is jet black, his eyes golden. He didn't decide to pick this form, he'd only moved, thinking that a bird isn't a very comforting creature but nothing more than that. But this... This is it, isn't it? This is who he shall be, forever and ever.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

For being such a tall young man, Andrew FitzHamilton's daemon is a very tiny, fluffy brown owl. “I could eat her in half a gulp,” Arete tells Miranda, not bothering to keep his voice down. Miranda grins at him, both of them ignoring the scandalized looks Catherine and Aunt Elizabeth give them. She reaches down just a bit to scratch between his ears. They know the tall man's name because he's a school friend of their youngest cousin Nicholas, though as he's a bastard Aunt Elizabeth won't allow an introduction.

 

 

“Be quiet,” Boreas orders, and Arete gives the greyhound a scornful look but says nothing. Miranda is the one who replies.

 

 

“It's not as though he heard us,” she says lightly, continuing to pet Arete.

 

 

He's unusual here, and they both know it. For all the pretensions of childhood, it's actually rather rare for nobles' daemons to settle as wild animals. If Arete is lying down, he can pass for simply a very oversized cat with large ears, gaining a few odd looks but nothing more. But when he stands, as he is doing now, his unusually long legs give him away. They take a fierce sort of enjoyment in the unsettled reactions of most people.

 

 

FitzHamilton is odd in that owls are wild – but then, wild birds are the most common of the non-domestic daemons. It's less common that his owl soars above the heads of those at the party, as far as she can go without straining the link between herself and her human. Arete is watching her while Miranda pretends to be interested in the conversation of yet another useless lordling when he notices a second owl glide up to join her. This owl is far bigger, her feathers white with brown bars. They circle for a bit before settling on a high bookshelf, the larger owl preening the smaller one.

 

 

Miranda turns away from the lordling – he likes Catherine better anyway, she's much better at smiling prettily and blushing sweetly – to see her daemon's attention fixed for once. “What is it?”

 

 

“I like those owls,” Arete says. “Trying to figure out who the other belongs to.” Just then, the owls take off again. The little one settles on FitzHamilton's shoulder, while the other lands on the shoulder of the man next to him. He's equally tall, though blond instead of dark-haired, and Arete guesses he must be the other bastard, or even the earl's sole legitimate son.

 

 

“What was it Matthew and Rhea said? The earl dislikes his son, so he supports his bastards as a threat?” Miranda says quietly, so only Arete can hear.

 

 

“Something like that. Why don't we go over and say hello? Aunt Elizabeth and the greyhound aren't watching us.”

 

 

Miranda grins, and so they head across the room. “I liked the display with your daemons,” she says as a greeting, while Arete leans against her legs and purrs. He isn't sure if the wildcat his form mimics can actually purr, but since there's no reason to think it doesn't, he seems to have kept the ability. He watches the owls, and while the little one just looks back curiously, the bigger one turns her head upside-down to stare back at him just as intently.

 

 

“Thank you very much,” the blond is saying, a mischievous smile on his face. “I'm Thomas Hamilton, this is my brother Andrew.”

 

 

“Only a FitzHamilton, mind,” Andrew says lightly.

 

 

“Yes, I know, my cousin Matthew is a friend of yours, Mr. FitzHamilton. Lord Hamilton, it's a pleasure. I'm Miranda Stafford.”

 

 

“Oh goodness, Matt's cousin! He's said quite a lot about you, says you're a bit of a rebel. You should get on with Tommy wonderfully if that's the case.”

 

 

“Now, Andrew, you make me sound like a reprobate.”

 

 

Miranda hums, amused. “Well, are you? My lord.”

 

 

For a brief moment, Thomas Hamilton looks startled, but then he grins, bright enough that Arete sees Miranda is smiling back without really thinking about it. “I prefer to think not, Miss Stafford, but I do think that you and I really _will_ get on quite well.”

 

 

The owl blinks her dark eyes, and Arete twitches his tail as he says, “Are you trying to unnerve me?”

 

 

“No,” she says in a low, pleasant voice. “I just like to see how people and their daemons react. My name is Eucleia, and I've never had even a cat watch me as if he'd be perfectly happy to pounce.”

 

 

Arete purrs low in his throat. “I'm Arete, and if you want to play that game, I'm happy to. It would liven up the room.”

 

 

Miranda looks at their daemons, then back at Thomas Hamilton. “I have to agree with you.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“He takes it all quite seriously, I'm afraid,” Thomas says to Miranda as they walk one of the gardens. Arete trails behind them, Eucleia soaring over their heads. “I suppose I can't entirely blame him – not after so many of our cousins are traitors. I've heard some of them live in Russia now, and some are with the exile court in France. But I do not think that should mean we simply... obey every stricture of the status quo just so that no one questions our loyalties!”

 

 

This is the first thing Thomas and Miranda have in common – as with Miranda and her aunt and cousins, Thomas and his father detest each other, sometimes cordially and often quite fiercely. In fact, the younger FitzHamilton, Robert, follows his father in all things and almost certainly will inherit should Alfred Hamilton ever find a pretext to disinherit Thomas. But, as both Thomas and Andrew say, he probably won't do that because of the scandal it would cause, although he may very much want to.

 

 

Far too many Hamiltons were linked to the Jacobite cause during the Glorious Revolution, far too many are now exiles as a result. Alfred Hamilton is obsessed with the idea of his family reputation, of never letting anyone question the loyalties of his branch of the family tree.

 

 

“He's as bad as my aunt Elizabeth,” Miranda confides, rolling her eyes. “They belong to an older generation. We could say they don't know any better, but I would say it's more that they do not care. But, really, you can't win by confronting them directly. Nod and smile while they're in the room, and go your own way after they leave, it's much more effective.”

 

 

“I've never been able to do that.”

 

 

“I've noticed!”

 

 

And indeed they have, after months of acquaintance, Arete thinks. The truth is, he and Miranda have never enjoyed anyone's company as much as they do Thomas and Leia's, though Andrew and Tethys are almost as good. But there's something about Thomas and Leia – true idealists, with a dream of somehow doing good in the world, even if they haven't quite worked out how they will do that.

 

 

Miranda and Arete aren't so sure they can do it with such pure beliefs as they seem to have, but it's impossible not to lose some of their own cynicism and get caught up in it, in conversations that cover politics and literature and philosophy, one flowing easily into the other. It's impossible not to fall a little in love with them.

 

 

But only a little, at least for now. There is something a little off about Thomas, in his reactions. What, they don't know, but there is something. So they talk about books, they talk about politics, but neither of them ever make a move to slip off during one of the rounds of parties, to go somewhere alone for so much as a kiss.

 

 

Everyone thinks they must just be exceptionally good at such sneaking off, especially given how close their daemons become. Leia likes to perch on Arete's back, preening his fur like she preens her own feathers. Other times, Arete curls around Leia, though he doesn't lick her feathers since she doesn't like it. Aunt Catherine glares daggers at them every time she sees it, and Boreas growls softly at the sight of them.

 

 

“Your aunt really does not like me,” Thomas says one day after Aunt Elizabeth has stalked out of the room. This particular party is going on in several, with the library they are in mostly filled by men. Arete supposes he and Miranda ought to feel out of place, but they don't. They never do, with Thomas and Leia here. And if only they knew what the distance was between them, that would be all they could ask.

 

 

 

“She thinks you have designs on my virtue,” Miranda says as Leia settles to preening Arete. They are remarkably secluded in this corner, soft conversation masked by the debates of the others in the room. “Or, knowing Aunt Catherine, she thinks I'm trying to seduce you.”

 

 

“Well, she doesn't think much of you or I, in that case.”

 

 

 

“She can tell you aren't serious in your friendship with me, so she takes it for an assignation.”

 

 

 

“Miranda, who says I'm not serious? I am, in my way. I thought you at least knew that.” Thomas actually looks hurt, and Leia flies off of Arete's back, settling in her human's lap. Thomas wraps an arm around her, while a stung Arete lays his head on Miranda's lap so she can stroke his head.

 

 

“I didn't mean anything by it, Thomas. I know you take our friendship seriously, I meant only that you don't see me as anything more than a friend. Or at least, so I assume, because I've had more interest from looks sent my way by complete strangers than from you in our hours together.”

 

 

 

“You think just because I'm not blatantly lusting after you I don't – what do you think – ” Thomas stops, fiddling with the wig they know he hates to wear. “We can't talk about this here. It's complicated, but believe me when I say I am very serious about you. I hoped you might feel the same.” He starts to get up but Miranda catches his wrist.

 

 

“I'm confused about you, Thomas. That means I can't be serious until I understand. But that is the only obstacle in our path.”

 

 

“You might not think so, once you do understand,” Thomas mutters. Leia hoots softly, cuddling in against her daemon.

 

 

For the first time, they do slip away, shutting themselves in a study down the hall from the library. Thomas paces, Leia circling agitatedly above their heads, and Arete can feel Miranda's hand shake where she rests it on her head. “Thomas, it can't be that terrible, can it?”

 

 

“It's not terrible at all,” Thomas says with a sharp defiance that doesn't really seem to be meant for them, more for whatever the circumstances are. “It's just awkward to tell a woman whom you're seriously considering proposing marriage to, especially when **she** apparently thinks you're just having a bit of fun.”

 

 

“For the record, if that was a proposal, that was terrible and I'd say no on principle alone,” Miranda says. “Thomas, what is it?”

 

 

“I don't desire women, all right? I'm ridiculously fond of you, might even say I love you, but you talk of men looking at you with interest and I can't do that. At least, I don't think I can. But that's one reason why I was hoping that you and I...”

 

 

“What reason?”

 

 

“I care about you. Wanting women is beyond me, but I can't – you're my closest friend aside from my brother, but what I feel for you isn't friendship exactly. It feels like more, but without the same... I want you at my side, and I think if there's any woman I can want, because you're important to me, I could with you if it's possible at all.”

 

 

Miranda stares at him, then turns away, hands fisted in her skirt as she paces away, going to the door and gripping the handle, but not turning it. Arete hasn't moved, sensing what it is they actually want. Miranda turns back, still gripping the handle. “We have to think,” Arete speaks for them. “You had to know that.” Thomas nods, turning away himself, then, hands braced on the windowsill.

 

 

And so, that night, Miranda and Arete talk. “I don't want a farce of a marriage,” Miranda says, raking a hand through her hair.

 

 

“Would it be one? Thomas and Leia... it's good with them. We're happy with them. More so with them, and Andrew and Tethys when they're with the four of us, than we've ever been even with our own family. It would be real, wouldn't it? Maybe not the standard, but what does that matter?”

 

 

Miranda is quiet for a long moment, legs tucked under her on the bed, Arete curled up across from her. Finally, she smiles, a bit melancholy but a true smile. “You're right about that. It will be real, one way or another,” Miranda decides. “We'll make it real.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

In the end, they come to an agreement. It turns out that Thomas was right, about the two of them in bed, but Miranda figures out early on that it isn't going to be enough for either of them. Thomas just prefers male lovers, even if they both come to enjoy going to bed together well enough. And as for Miranda, she isn't entirely sure she wants a lover, but the idea is... intriguing, anyway. Intriguing enough that she wants the opportunity.

 

 

So the arrangement is this. They will be honest with each other. They'll talk about their lovers – not in detail, perhaps, but they'll share at least a little. If they're considering taking a lover, they will say something before they do. There is one other thing that they agree to, the morning when they sit up in bed together and make their agreement. Arete is lying sprawled over Thomas' lap, purring as he pets him, while Leia perches on Miranda's shoulder, running her beak gently through Miranda's long dark hair.

 

 

“No one else touches our daemons,” Miranda says, watching Thomas' hands on Arete's fur.

 

 

“No,” Thomas says, the fingers on his free hand twitching as if he wants a pen in hand to try and draw Miranda and Leia together. Even though he really cannot draw well at all. But the deal is set. Their bodies and to some extent their minds can be shared, but their hearts, and their very souls, are only for them.

 

 

Within two years of their marriage, they've both taken brief lovers, and found that there's another benefit to their honesty.

 

 

Their own lovemaking is somehow very much improved by talking about their other lovers. Unexpected, but more than pleasant. And so they continue on. Miranda is careful, when she takes lovers. Unlike Thomas, who doesn't have to worry about errant fertility, Miranda is not willing to pass off someone else's child as theirs. It's too big a risk, and while rumors abound about her in particular – not a bad thing, as she doesn't care what they think and rumors about her prevent dangerous ones about Thomas – she doesn't want a child who looks like someone who isn't her husband.

 

 

Just in case, her lovers are usually dark haired and dark eyed like her, or blond and blue eyed like Thomas. Except, of course, for Andrew.

 

 

Andrew is the only lover she barely speaks of, for obvious reasons. The only one not surprised by their ending up in bed together is Arete, who can cuddle Tethys with just one foreleg when their humans are together, and often does. It's easiest, during the months of 1701 when Andrew is living with them. He and Thomas are close as ever, practically twins, and most nights he's in Miranda's bed. He is the only lover she isn't careful with – even Thomas doesn't seem to object to the idea of raising his nephew or niece as his own child.

 

 

“Is this a good idea?” Andrew asks, that first morning.

 

 

“I don't know,” Miranda says. “But I think it was always going to happen, don't you?”

 

 

In the end, they don't have long to think about it, because the earl sends his less favored bastard son abroad, as far as he can manage. Andrew is settled with the ambassador's staff in Russia, while exchanging letters with Thomas and Miranda alike, but they never speak of it again. She thinks, just after Andrew leaves, that she might be pregnant, but nothing comes of it. Her father-in-law has never been fond of her, merely fond enough of her dowry, larger than Miranda herself had expected due to her uncle's generosity. He is even happier about the fact that neither the Staffords nor Miranda's Howard kin have any taint of the Jacobite to them. But as months and then years go by without any children, without Miranda and Thomas falling in line with how he thinks they ought to behave, he glowers more and more every time he sees them.

 

 

He hears the rumors, of course. Perhaps he even suspects the larger situation. But really, the trouble is politics. Alfred and Thomas have never agreed, and as the years pass, things only get worse. He hands off the problem of New Providence Island to his son early in 1705 partly to get rid of a hassle he'd rather not deal with, but, Miranda suspects, partly as a final test. What will happen if Thomas fails this test she doesn't know – presumably the earl will try to follow through on the implicit threat that is Robert FitzHamilton, but she really can't be sure.

 

 

“You'll have to tread carefully. Please, Leia, tell him to be careful this time. It's a test, Alfred and his damned vulture will attack in a moment if you falter,” Arete says one morning, their humans more asleep yet than awake.

 

 

“Do you really think we can do that, darling?” Leia says, and the soft response has Miranda wide awake as if it had been a shout in her ear. She looks at Thomas, still dozing, then at their daemons, and Arete knows she is hoping that they are wrong about what this is. But they both know better by now.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“Oh, she's lovely,” Arete says, standing on the seat with his front paws on Miranda's lap. They can see Thomas and Leia with the new liaison and his daemon. Arete has already decided to like them, a bit odd for him. He can't really give a reason for it, except... That daemon is not a dog. She tries to hold herself like one, but she isn't, and Arete is fascinated. Leia says her name is Mona, which is probably a nickname.

 

 

“Not you too,” Miranda says tolerantly. They've already had to sit through Thomas going on at length about how much he thinks Lieutenant McGraw was the perfect choice even if he is terribly cynical, they're going to get on wonderfully.

 

 

“I've always preferred my fellow oddballs, Miri. You know that. Why do you imagine this Lieutenant McGraw wanted to take them to a hanging?”

 

 

“Probably to impress upon Thomas the seriousness of the situation. You know Leia said she thinks they're skeptical of Thomas' sincerity. They think he's just another silly lordling who won't really try to do anything.”

 

 

“... Oh, are they in for a shock,” Arete says, purring with pleased amusement.

 

 

“Aren't they just. And I think we ought to play our part in it all, don't you?”

 

 

“Is that why we're here then?”

 

 

“Well, that and it could just be amusing,” Miranda says with a sly grin, and Arete laughs. It can only help if the liaison likes them, he decides, given what Thomas and Leia have cooked up as the perfect plan to save Nassau, and charming Lieutenant McGraw and his lovely daemon are certainly a fun way to try and make that happen.

 

 

The first time, that day near the gallows, Miranda pretends not to know his name, pretends that Thomas hasn't said a word about him. His eyes are green and just as striking as the black hound at his side, and there's a hint of a smile on his face that tells her both she and Thomas are well on their way to charming him.

 

 

What startles her, though, is that James McGraw knows politics for the blood sport that it is, and seems already to sense that Thomas is playing with fire, and might not be fully aware of the fact.

 

 

“We need to keep him around,” she tells Arete when they leave and are headed home. “He seems like a realist, and smart enough to pick up on danger before it's too late. What do you think?”

 

 

“I think with a daemon like that, Lieutenant McGraw can pick up on danger because he _is_ dangerous,” Arete says flatly. “But that might be just what we need.” They are both thinking of Alfred and the beady stare of his vulture daemon, neither of them need to speak of it.

 

 

As it happens, they end up quite liking him as well. There are times they join Thomas and Lieutenant McGraw, Leia and Mona, as they sit in the library and toss ideas back and forth, sometimes in easy conversation and sometimes in heated debate, sliding easily from one to another. Other times they don't, but they catch James and Mona on the way in or out of the house and talk to them for a while.

 

 

“I admit, ma'am, there are days I don't know what to make of your husband, even after weeks of knowing him,” he says once, and Miranda laughs.

 

 

“I have been married to Thomas for several years, and sometimes neither do I. But then, sometimes he doesn't know what to make of me, and I can assure you that you have confounded him the same way at times. That's half the fun of it all, Lieutenant.”

 

 

Then comes the day when she suggests he ought to read _Don Quixote_ as a way of understanding Thomas. Thomas takes her hand and draws her down to sit on the arm of his chair as the three of them talk, Arete going to curl around Leia. She sees the way Mona watches the other daemons, and more importantly, she sees the stunned look in James' eyes when he looks at her and Thomas. It's a look she knows, that first moment of infatuation that hits one like a velvet punch, and she realizes that it is meant for both of them.

 

 

That night, it turns out that Thomas noticed too. Miranda will ask herself, later, if she made her move only a few days later on the whim she tells herself it is at the time, or because she is determined to get there _first_.

 

 

<><><>

 

  


It’s awkward, at first, once all three of them are involved. Of course it is; for all that they are open with each other, have occasionally covered for each other, the Hamiltons have never before taken the same lover. The closest they’d ever come to such a thing had been with Andrew, and that had been more like the two brothers sharing a wife than anything else, really. Not that Miranda and Arete had felt _shared_ , exactly, like one might share a book, but it had been like… a joint marriage, of sorts. So is this, in a way, but in a different way. Arete can’t find words for it, the way to explain it, but it feels different. Perhaps because they are all in each other’s beds this time, whereas with Andrew it had been a kind of extension of familial ties already in place.

  
  
James and Mona are _new_ , and it’s both wonderful and difficult. There's a few weeks after that mess of a dinner where they see almost nothing of Thomas and Leia or James and Mona, they're so wrapped up in each other. Miranda and Arete try not to feel ignored, though it's not always easy. Not when the two of them had shared their first kiss with her sitting right there, as Leia soared down to land on Mona's back, preening the fur between her ears.

 

 

No, it isn't always easy at all.

 

 

James is the one to break free of the rush of a new affair first, his quick knock coming on her bedroom door one night after yet another day of discussing plans for Nassau. Miranda opens the door to find James standing there looking almost sheepish. Mona nuzzles Arete uncertainly, as if expecting him to swipe at her muzzle. Arete purrs, though, twining around the wolfdog's legs, while Miranda gives James a lopsided smile. “Isn't it usually me at your door?”

 

 

“Yes, well. It seemed about time I came to see you, especially since you've been kept waiting for longer than expected,” James says, his own smile growing when Miranda lets him in. She draws him down into a kiss as his arms come round to pull her closer, and after that, it's better.

 

 

Thomas has the largest bed, so when it's the three of them, they usually end up there. As it turns out, none of them have ever had more than one lover at a time, which makes for some interesting and comical incidents early on as they try to figure out how best they can all fit.

 

 

“I think perhaps we'll not try that position again,” Thomas says after one such mishap, naked as the day he was born and blinking up at them from where he's landed in an awkward sprawl on the rug by his bed. “What do you say?” he adds, his voice full of wounded dignity.

 

 

Miranda, looking at him, is the first to burst out laughing, but James follows. They cannot manage to stop either, even when Thomas gets back to his feet and starts swinging at them both with a pillow, scolding all the while about how rude it is to mock a fallen man.

 

 

Surprisingly, she and Thomas do not talk about the times one of them is alone with James. It's as if having a third _partner_ makes them want to keep the times alone with him private. Miranda doesn't really know why it is and tries not to dwell on it too much. They fit together, in bed and out of it, and that seems to be what matters most.

 

 

There is one last line to cross, even after they are all three sharing a bed – and occasionally the floor, and on one memorable occasion a table – and that is their daemons. Mona, who turns out to be a hybrid, part wolf and part dog like a beast James says stalked his hometown of Padstow when he was a boy, is large enough that both Arete and Leia can cuddle her at the same time. Often, when the three of them are together, Arete is tucked in against Mona's side as Leia perches on her, somewhere where she can reach to preen both wildcat and wolfdog.

 

 

But neither Thomas nor Miranda has ever touched Mona, ever run their hands through her thick fur. Not until their last morning together before James must leave for three months in Nassau. There's no warning at all when Thomas and Miranda suddenly have a huge hound sprawled across both their laps, when they look up to see Leia on James' shoulder and Arete rubbing his head against James' leg until he pets him.

 

 

Thomas scratches between Mona's ears while Miranda pets her side, and the warmth that floods them all is more than happiness, more than desire or even love. It is, quite simply, the feeling of _home_.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

Three months. It feels like far longer, but in a way Miranda and Arete are relieved. They don't want to be – they feel the loss of James and Mona, if not quite as keenly as Thomas and Leia do, but they also know how close to danger they are. Three months is time enough for the rumors to die down a bit. And the rumors need to die down, because for once they are dangerous.

 

 

It occurs to Miranda that they'd never realized there was a measure of safety in never sharing lovers. Before, if anyone looked too closely at her, they would only see that she was an unfaithful wife, that Thomas was quite possibly a willing or at least tolerant cuckold. They were unlikely to look too closely at Thomas, since men were expected to have dalliances and it would just be assumed that if he met lovers in out of the way spots it was because they were lowborn women or prostitutes. But if anyone looked too closely at her and _James_ , known to be Thomas' liaison and his friend as well...

 

 

All in all, as unpleasant as it is, the three months without James are probably a minor blessing.

 

 

They do not tell Thomas and Leia this. The two of them are completely head over heels, which would worry Miranda less if James and Mona weren't just as bad. She and Arete adore them, but it's... not the same. Not less, but not so consuming. “I don't think we're exactly the sort to be consumed,” Arete says. “Which is good – someone needs to be sensible.”

 

 

“I'm starting to think that sensible people would never have started this at all,” Miranda says, but truthfully, she doesn't wish they hadn't taken up with James. She just wishes she didn't have this sense of impending disaster, or that the sense came with some clear idea of what to _do_ about it. She can't forget that last golden morning and the sense of home, can't forget all the happy moments before it, and yet she is frightened, and cannot say quite why.

 

 

When James comes back, they do try. Miranda goes to Thomas the day James' ship comes back, Arete pacing behind her with his tail lashing. Leia watches her, feathers ruffling at how tense he is. She tries to suggest that she may go to the country house for a while with a casual tone, hoping he won't ask questions. But of course Arete gives her away, and even if he didn't Thomas knows her too well and he knows she doesn't even like the country house much. Trying to say it's just about the feud between Thomas and Alfred isn't enough – they have, after all, been fighting in quieter ways since before Miranda even met Thomas. So she grits her teeth for an explanation she would rather not give.

 

 

“The lieutenant's ship arrived this morning,” Miranda says, hands on Thomas' chest, stilling him long enough to hear her out. He looks puzzled, though, unable to figure out why she seems more concerned than happy, or why this news would make her think it's time to go away for a while.

 

 

“Returned from the Bahama Islands this morning, I received word not long ago,” she continues. “The rumors about me and my relationship with him have gone quiet the past few months he's been away, and I'm concerned that when he returns people will start whispering again.”

 

 

“Let them whisper,” Thomas says, as he always has, and Miranda bites back a scream, forcing herself to stay calm.

 

 

“It's not the rumors that concern me. It's the scrutiny that follows that. And what that scrutiny might unearth.”

 

 

“So someone might discover you and he shared a bed,” Thomas says dismissively, and Miranda finds herself thinking that this is the confidence of an earl's only heir, that absolute sense that nothing can truly harm you. The trouble is, that very same earl is the threat they face.

 

 

“I'm concerned they might dig past that and discover something far more damaging than that,” she says, meeting his eyes and willing him to listen for once, to be cautious for once in his life. For all their sakes.

 

 

He doesn't, of course.

 

 

She tries again with James, drawing him aside. Mona is a dark sentinel by the closed door and Arete is pacing again as she tries to convince their third of what Thomas could not see. “Thomas, he sees only the principle. The right. It's inspiring. It can be intoxicating. It's why I love him. But you, you see the world as it is. You see its truths and how to navigate them. How to bend them to your will. It's why I love you. Men like Thomas need men like you. To protect them from the world. And that is what I am asking you to do. The danger is simply too great.” She needs him to see, desperately needs one of them to take her side in this so they can stop this collision before it ruins them all.

 

 

“Anything that has ever been worth doing has been worth doing in the face of a little danger,” James tells her, and his defiance is not Thomas' brand of defiance, there is that much at least. He will never be an idealist, but he is loyal, and a true believer – in Thomas, in this case. James' defiance is the new rebellion of someone who has always believed in doing things as expected, and now does not. Because of Thomas. Because of her. But in this moment Miranda needs the lieutenant who had told her driver to take her home, not the one who had smiled a sharp blade of a smile and pinned her to her carriage seat.

 

“I have been the subject of enough ridicule and innuendo to know the difference between a little danger and mortal danger, and I'm telling you that what you and Thomas and I face right now is the latter.”

 

“What's been going on in this house isn't just some affair.”

 

“No. No it isn't.”

 

“But since when did you care what other people think?”

 

She remembers his tiny chilly room, the one she'd looked around with badly-hidden distaste (she feels a bit guilty for that reaction, in hindsight). Remembers what she'd said to him that day. _“In my experience, there is an inverse relationship between the degree of one's happiness and the concern one has for what the neighbors think.”_

 

She still believes that, of course, but what neither of her men seem to understand is that this is not the same thing. “This isn't a question of scandal. It isn't a state of mind. They _hang men_ for this.”

 

“Don't be naive,” James scoffs, and Miranda briefly considers shaking him as Arete hisses and Mona shifts on her feet. Instead she glares at James, reminding him with one hard look just who he's talking to.

 

“When they have political motive, they use it as a pretense to hang men. Don't treat me like I'm someone else. I know what London is, too,” she tells him. This is the thing she and James have most in common. She is a woman of questionable blood, he is a commoner who rose from nothing. They both know what London is behind the speeches and the parties and the bright colors of uniforms and rich clothes in a way Thomas will never understand, and she has known this from that very first conversation.

 

But it's not enough. All she manages is James coming up with a new method to help Thomas win the battle, and she can only hope he's right about Admiral Hennessey.

 

She isn't surprised when he isn't. She isn't even really surprised when Alfred's men come, for all her rage afterward.

 

And what surprises her least of all is James' declaration that they will go to Nassau.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

There is no reason, really, for her to lie to James. Who gave her the information is not likely to matter to him much, not when the far more important thing is what it is that Miranda has to tell him. Of course, in truth, she really shouldn't tell him at all. She ought to just let it lie, burn Andrew's letter and pretend she never saw it at all.

 

 

That would be the sensible thing to do.

 

 

But Miranda doesn't feel very sensible, when she thinks about Alfred Hamilton sailing to the New World, new wife in tow as he plans to sire a new heir, one he can mold more to his liking. She still has Peter's letter, the other one she'd meant to burn and yet cannot bear to. It's hidden behind the painting of herself and Thomas, the letter in shaky handwriting telling her that Thomas had killed himself in Bethlem.

 

 

They'd meant to go back for him. Mona and Arete had spoken of it where James and Miranda could not bear to, but that had always been there, a half-formed plan in their heads, that somehow they would get him back, bring him to Nassau. They'd brought some of his things among what they could salvage, even one of Leia's perches.

 

 

That's gone now, broken up for firewood, too painful a reminder.

 

 

She thinks of Thomas alone but for Leia in a cell, twisting a sheet to make a rope, and Leia vanishing in a cloud of golden dust. She thinks of the men who had burst into the library and dragged Thomas away, how they had put their hands on Leia.

 

 

She tells James that a maid wrote to her that Alfred Hamilton and his new wife will be traveling to Charles Town on a ship called the Maria Aleyne, while Arete weaves between Mona's legs, and they know what they are doing, they understand. The last promise they made to Thomas and Leia was that they and James and Mona would take care of each other. This, Miranda and Arete know, is not taking care. This is using their surviving love as a weapon for revenge.

 

 

They wouldn't do it if James and Mona didn't crave it every bit as much as they do. At least, that's what they tell themselves. It's what they tell themselves when they see them off, the pirate captain with his giant wolf at his side – for Mona does not seem much a dog anymore, her wolfish side more dominant with every day James McGraw is subsumed in Captain Flint.

 

 

It's what they tell themselves when they come home, when James kisses Miranda's forehead and Mona nuzzles Arete. “It's done,” James whispers in a low voice that sounds like the one in Miranda's own head that had urged her to tell him in the first place.

 

 

It's what they tell themselves when revenge doesn't ease the pain, when all it does is lead to an ever-widening chasm between Miranda and James, until most of their affection is shown only through their daemons curling up together every time James is home.

 

 

James and Miranda hardly touch, and never touch each other's daemons.

 

 

Miranda read once, in one of Thomas' books, that the ancient Egyptians believed a soul had nine parts. One was the daemon, of course, but another was... She cannot remember all the names, now, but the shadow side of the soul, the part where darkness could hide. James rages over the water while she fades to a ghost here in this abandoned house, and revenge didn't do a damn thing but speed up the process.

 

 

For that as much as anything else, this last awful sort of victory, she hopes that Alfred Hamilton burns in the lowest circle of hell.

 

 

But none of it does any good when the real truth is that they could see Alfred dead, but all that eases is the anger. It doesn't ease the guilt, it doesn't fix the fact that they blame themselves – and they blame each other.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“It was the only thing to do, if we want this to end,” Miranda says, and she doesn't need Arete to do anything but look at her, long black tail lashing, to hear him asking her just who it is that she is trying to convince. After all, if her daemon needs convincing, then she needs convincing. The truth is, she doesn't want to think about James and Mona, how they will react when they find out about her letter. She knows them, better than anyone, and she knows they will think of it as a betrayal.

 

 

It _is_ a betrayal, strictly speaking. But a betrayal made for his future and hers, so that they may _have_ one. Ten years of this, of grief and a slow-burn war of revenge, and for what? To bring back the dead? Impossible. To free Nassau, somehow? In truth, Miranda can no longer find a shred of interest in herself for the fate of this damned island. Nassau can rot for all she cares.

 

 

“ _You'll fight a war so we can make a life?”_

 

 

“ _You don't get one without the other, my sweet.”_

 

 

“ _No. You're wrong.”_

 

 

 

She knows he's wrong, and she will prove it. She has to prove it, because she is going mad here, and James is losing what little of himself he still has, and they – they have to leave before there is nothing but ash. “It's the only thing,” she repeats, setting her teacup down gently because she wants to fling it at the wall and that would just be a waste.

 

 

 

“That's not entirely true, Miri,” Arete says quietly from where he is sunning himself by the window. Like that, legs folded under him, he looks almost like a normal cat, just a very large one with oversized ears. It's a trick he'd long since learned to use, although in the moment it's just incidental.

 

 

“No,” Miranda agrees, sinking into one of her kitchen chairs. “If there was still a way to fulfill James' goal – to fulfill some version of _Thomas'_ goal – I would agree to it. I would do what was in my power to see it through. But there isn't, and you and I know that. James and Mona have to see it, and if they won't simply listen, well... They'll forgive us that letter, we know that.”

 

 

“Yes, but should they? Should we have forgiven them, for leaving us alone here for most of the last decade? We can't even forgive each other for -”

 

 

“Stop it, Arete. We're not discussing that right now. We have to get out of here while we still have some kind of life to put back together.” Miranda tugs the pins out of her hair and rubs her temples, but her brewing headache only gets worse. He's right, of course, but this isn't about the past anymore. It's about trying to let go of it, finally.

 

 

She wonders if they really can.

 


End file.
